•  HOME 
•  ARCHIVES 
•  BOOKS 
•  PDF ARCHIVE 
•  WWP 
•  SUBSCRIBE 
•  DONATE 
•  MUNDOOBRERO.ORG      

Cubans live through yet another hurricane

For the third time in less than 10 weeks, Cuba has demonstrated its ability to save lives during a powerful tropical storm.

Hurricane Paloma, a Category 4 storm generating 145-mph winds and heavy rain, ripped into the island from the south on Nov. 8. The coastal city directly in its path, Santa Cruz del Sur, had lost 3,000 people in a similar hurricane in 1932, most of them drowned in a sea surge. This time, even though crashing surf and a powerful surge sent waves almost a mile inland, no storm-related deaths were reported anywhere in Cuba. (Associated Press, Nov. 10) After a day of drenching rains over land already saturated with water, Hurricane Paloma diminished to a tropical depression.

The reason no one died is that the Cuban government evacuated 1.2 million people away from the coast and other vulnerable areas. Cuba has a well-developed plan for temporarily moving storm evacuees to homes of friends and relatives, as well as to public shelters. When disaster strikes, the whole population is mobilized through the mass organizations that are an essential element in Cuba’s socialist democracy.

In August and again in September, two earlier storms, Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, had roared through the Caribbean before moving north. Hundreds died in several Caribbean countries from these monster storms. Ike caused at least 51 deaths in the United States. (AP, Sept. 17) In addition, the Laura Recovery Center still lists 59 people missing along the Gulf coast of Texas.

In Cuba, only four people died because of Hurricane Ike; everyone was accounted for. However, the damage to the economy from these two storms was terrible.

One-third of Cuba’s crops were destroyed. This and the widespread damage to the infrastructure and housing were estimated to cost the country $9.4 billion.

And now comes Paloma.

Many Cubans who had been rebuilding their homes after the first two storms have now seen them totally swept away or irreparably damaged. Electric and phone lines that had just been repaired are down again.

As Paloma was bearing down on Cuba, Fidel Castro wrote an essay about the danger to the food supply. He predicted “many crops that were expected soon, countless hours of human sacrifice, gasoline, seeds, fertilizer, herbicides and the work of labor teams to produce food urgently, will be lost anew.”

Repeated natural disasters like this pose great difficulties for any country. But revolutionary Cuba has a special problem: the U.S. economic blockade. For 46 years Washington, furious at losing a rich source of profits for U.S. corporations, has tried to strangle socialist Cuba by cutting off its access to trade with the world.

For the last 17 years, however, the nations of the world have voted overwhelmingly in the U.N. General Assembly to lift the trade embargo. This year the vote against the blockade was the biggest ever: 185 countries. Washington could get only Israel and the tiny Pacific island of Palau to vote with it. Micronesia and the Marshall Islands abstained. The United States seized all three of these small Pacific states during World War II and held them for four decades as part of its “Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.” Obviously, Washington still keeps them in an iron grip.

The blockade prevents Cuba from being able to get the normal credit arrangements that facilitate trade all over the world. It prevents ships from docking in Cuba. It prevents U.S. companies and their affiliates in other countries from selling to or buying from Cuba. It penalizes companies in other countries that do business with Cuba.

It prevents U.S. citizens from traveling and spending money there, and limits remittances from Cuban Americans to their families back home.

After Hurricane Ike, the Bush administration offered a paltry $5 million in aid to Cuba—with the stipulation that a team from USAID, which is well known to have long fronted for CIA operations, be allowed to come and “assess” Cuba’s needs.

Havana rejected this obvious ploy, saying that instead of offering “gifts” with strings attached, Washington should just drop the blockade and let Cuba buy what it needs from the United States.

The worldwide struggle against the long and cruel blockade is growing. The U.S. is totally isolated on this issue—another foreign policy disaster the new administration in Washington will have to cope with.

E-mail: dgriswold@workers.org